One Flew Over the Dragon's Nest
by michael1812
Summary: Nothing is what it seems, when Stark joins a group of addled pilgrims and patients seeking spiritual guidance from a lonely priest on a distant and barren world. Something moves in the dark beneath them and death stalks them all. No prayer can help Stark face his fears.
1. Chapter 1

Blood. Gaping. Oozing. As if the flesh had simply decided to shed layer after layer, unzipping a dark and juicy centre filled with pain. It had happened as Stark watched on. One moment it was smooth, spotless, and pale, the next it had just opened. His arm bled, and it bled because it wanted to. He wanted it to.

Stark had heard of such a gift before. Zhaan had always been capable of taking and sharing certain degrees of pain, but never like this, never as visceral, as disgusting and as beautiful, as this. It was pure love that had enabled him to do this. Pure empathy. It astounded and terrified Stark.

Jurnus writhed involuntarily, beads of glistening sweat streaming down his bald face. His eye sockets were deep grey pockets. Stark tried to steady the whites of those eyes.

"Jurnus…" he said.

He let go of his arm, and with his gloved hands he reached to undo the straps of his mask, but Jurnus stopped him.

"Don't take my pain…"

Then the wound closed, one layer of flesh and muscle reconnecting one fibre at a time, as if Jurnus' body was catching on to the alien happening and that it hadn't actually been cut. It had just been dreaming, and then the dream became too real. A phantom pain turned reality for only a moment. The wound was still bleeding, but it had significantly been reduced. Jurnus tore a strip of cloth from his tattered shirt and bound it around his wrist. He groaned as he tightened it, and Stark sighed when he was done.

Stark did the same to his mask. The cold edges of the bronze sculpture pressed into his nose. He was relieved their wounds had healed as they had, and that the worst had been averted. When he'd ran into this room and found the body of the beautiful Ando'reen with her arms hanging over the side of her bloodied bed and her wrists cut, he didn't know what to do. But Jurnus ran to the girl's bed and bade her back from the beyond. Ando'reen was awake now, panting as Jurnus had as the pains receded. She felt her wrists. Red bleeding marks remained like shallow cuts. Jurnus had absorbed everything else.

"Why'd you do that, priest?" She cried. Jurnus took her arms and kissed the blood, and Stark felt like crying too.

Of all the souls he'd encountered on his many wandering ways, his had been the most beautiful.

****

Stark spent the next few solar days pondering over what he had seen, from the room he wasn't allowed to leave. A prison of brick and mortar, with a door that wasn't locked.

He pounded his skull with a flat hand, squeezing the muscles around his eye shut. "It's all in my head, it's all in my head, it's all in my head…"

A dark mood had come over him, like a cloud that had moved in front of the sun, and it wouldn't go away. It'd just come over him, crawling into his mind like a thousand insects. It was there. Like it always had come and gone. The voices of inadequacy, insecurity, of fear and doubt. There, just there, paralyzing him on his own bed, making all efforts seem pointless and stupid.

Doubt was good. He could use doubt. But doubt without answers could turn toxic. A simple curiosity could turn into a gnawing, biting insecurity that burned through flesh like acid. What would he do? What would he say? What had he done?

Could he succeed? Could he move on? Could he return? Could he fight it, or flee it or accept it?

Jurnus came to him, just like he had come bursting through the door of the girl. Because he needed him. Jurnus cared because he had no choice but to care. But Stark had a choice, yes, Stark had a choice. He was not cursed to love like Jurnus was.

With a simple twist of Jurnus' wrist, Stark fell to the ground. He seemed to have touched some mysterious pressure point on Stark's body, some exposed nerve ending connected to the outside world, like a machine's off button. Stark didn't even know he had one. And most of the pain slipped away from him, as if by holding on he'd just been boiling it and cultivating it. Madness breeds by obsession. Yet ignoring it won't make it go away either.

It's why he had come here. It's why he had sought help.

"I don't think I am of much use to you anymore," Stark said, lying helplessly on the ground.

"I am so sorry, my friend," Jurnus said. His voice was soothing, but dry and unused. He dressed like a monk in tattered robes two sizes too big for him, with the texture of a woven reed basket. He was practically naked underneath, but in this hot atmosphere layers were made for survival, not for comfort or discretion.

"You're like a lightning rod. So sensitive. You're much like myself in that regard. Which is why I need you. It's why I chose you to be my apprentice."

"With all due respect" Stark spoke darkly, from the depths of his mood, "I'm not your friend. I did not come here to be your apprentice."

"And I didn't come here to be your physician." He lifted Stark off the floor and handed him an earthen bowl filled with white sloshing liquid. It smelled of flowers. "Drink. I made it this morning."

Stark wasn't thirsty, except he was. When Jurnus handed the bowl to him, he did not decline.

Stark zipped uneasily, keeping his eye on Jurnus's pale and gaunt face. The old priests's eyes were always twinkling, his mouth was always smiling, but Stark knew he had to be hiding some terrible secret. Something so heinous he exiled himself here to this barren wasteland, to this dead castle in the red desert.

"It's good," Stark said, wiping his lips. As he sighed, he also forgot.

"I'll show you how to make it later. Let us meditate first."

"No, no, no, no…" Stark objected and Jurnus simply smiled.

"I know you don't like to be alone right now, " he said. "But you won't be. I'll be meditating too."

"No, no, no, it's not that. I know I'm not alone. I'm never alone. And I think that's the problem…"

Jurnus reached out and touched Stark's mask. A frown creased the old man's face.

"Last night," Jurnus said. "You've seen what I can do."

His sleeve slid down his arm and exposed the fresh wound still throbbing underneath his wrist.

"My whole body is a scar. One hurt after the other. But you carry your scars in here." He tapped the bronze mask and sighed. "It's one wound I cannot take from you, and I think I wouldn't even want to."

"It's my gift…" Stark said. He questioned the words after they escaped his lips.

"Come."

Stark held the bowl in his hands like a treasure. He didn't want to spill any of the fruit drink as they made their way on to the landing outside the room. Dawn crept through small slits carved into the ancient and crumbling stone walls and sometimes Stark could feel a gust of sand, as if the surrounding desert crept inside the castle to remind them they were not alone. A stone staircase wound itself around the negative space like a coiling snake, and they tread the steps carefully down into the levels below. Stark looked up and imagined himself climbing down the bottom of a dried up well.

A sharp pain struck his temple and something trickled down the steps and fell down into the hole. Another rock hit the stones and missed him by a hair. "Torryn, stop that! Stop that right now!" Jurnus could be angry too, and Stark feared him when he got angry.

Torryn sped away into his mother's room, laughing while he dropped the rocks from his hands. The boy was older than he looked, older than his mother treated him, and would always pelt rocks at Stark when nobody was looking. Always teasing and always tormenting him. Children could always sense weakness.

When the bell rang, more people joined the walk down the stairs of the tower. Their footfalls against the dry stone slabs became a rhythm of flesh against rock, as they pattered barefoot into the depths. Thirteen of them in total. Thirteen patients. And Jurnus.

They all settled down in a large semi-circle around Jurnus, as per habit and Jurnus' previous instructions, on a large carpet that covered the enormous round chamber at the bottom of the tower. Jurnus lit three torches to provide light where the sun couldn't reach.

"How do you pay for all this?" Stark asked Jurnus as he handed out their portions for the day. Once opened, smoke billowed from the refrigeration units. The crackers were tough to chew and chilled to the touch and tasted like recycled processed waste. Stark's question lingered in the silence, ignored.

Every few weekens or so supplies would be delivered by a mute. The yellow-eyed mercenary with skin as red as clay never spoke or even looked at them as he wheeled down some crates of crackers from the back of his spacecraft and flew off again. He only seemed to care for the priest's blessing. Besides him, they practically had no contact with the outside world at all. Jurnus only had a makeshift generator to provide a semblance of power and protection against the elements beyond the castle walls, and a small communications array seemingly ripped straight out of a Peacekeeper motherboard. Stark had no idea how Jurnus had managed to make that work, but it did.

Jurnus lit up when surrounded by his patients. He smiled, even laughed, like a man who was used to being alone. Once everyone had settled down, Jurnus wrung his hands and sighed, as if he failed to find the right words to begin his habitual speech.

"Can I help?" Stark asked. "I can lead the morning prayer with a Conglorian chant of Harmony, or possibly a Hynerian wail of Abstinence…"

"A few words will do just fine, Stark, but I think it's me they want to hear."

Stark sat back down again.

"A few weekens ago, I was still alone. A traveller came to me, wounded, frightened and on the run, and I did what anyone would do, and I helped him. I gave him the milk from the Habherass Tree, just as I gave it to you when you arrived. I patched him up and sent him on his way, with a few words of advice and a helping hand in the right direction. I had nothing, but I shared with him all I had. Then more travellers came, who had heard of me, who had come seeking the same guidance, the same council, the same milk, and I gave it to them, and sent them on their way. More and more came, and suddenly I was loved, and they called me Father. I am nobody's Father. I am just a child of the storm, such as yourselves, like we all are. I can give you what I have, share with you what I have found, if you promise you won't take more than you need."

Listening was what Stark did best. He tried to hear all what Jurnus had to say, until Torryn was back, sneaking up at him from behind. "Get back!" Stark hissed at the boy. The boy grabbed at Stark's bowl with both hands and in a bout of madness Stark bared his teeth at him, whispering: "It's mine! MINE!"

Torryn slapped the bowl from his hands and the liquid seeped in between the cracks of the stones.

Stark beat and chased the boy back to its mother, where the lanky wide-eyed youth hid beneath her wide skirt. She was oblivious, naturally, too busy noticing the blonde girl Ando'reen's cuts which she thought were tattoos. The mother slapped the boy and held him close. She didn't slap him half as hard as Stark would have wanted to, but not even double that violence would make that boy change his tormented ways.

"Stark, if you would be so kind…" Jurnus spoke. "We're out of Haberhass milk."

The earthen bowl lay toppled on the ground in a dry puddle of its own contents.

"But he…"

"The boy will be corrected. Please bring more flowers from the cellar."

Jurnus looked angry. Or just stern. Stark wondered if there was something he was trying to tell him, or whether it was something else. Stark didn't know. From across the room, Jurnus almost looked… disgusted.

"Of course."

Begrudgingly, Stark removed himself from the scene. He recalled a mantra to calm himself, with half forgotten words. He was glad to be going anyway. Ms Sond would be complaining about the heat in her room any microt now. Always the same cries about the loud noises at night and the heat at the bottom of the tower. Always complaining, whilst Stark always made do with whatever he had. He didn't know any better. It's how he survived. It's a lesson he learned a long time ago, and he was baffled why they hadn't embraced it too.

The doors of the atrium were heavy double doors barred with a large log rotten at its core. He lifted the log from its ancient bronze handles and set it at an angle against the wall. As he pulled the giant ringed knockers the doors creaked and moaned, as if they objected to being touched. Then a hot breeze touched Stark's nose. Closing them seemed easier, and then there was silence, and then he was alone.

Being alone gave him the time to set his thoughts in order, to breathe and let his anger out. He could complain without anyone hearing him. He imagined clawing his own ears off just thinking about Ms Sond's stupidity, or that horrible Torryn child doing whatever the hell it wants. Stark just wanted to be left alone.

And yet he was here, because he needed Jurnus. Because he needed people.

Down in the cellar, large vines covered the dark walls. The room stank. The air was so thick. Every wall was overgrown with plants. Stark could barely see the walls. Just darkness. When he stepped inside, he planted a foot right into one of the pods he was looking for. Milky goo covered his sandal.

Stark plucked five more from the walls, navigating the sharp thorns. Then something rustled through the vines and he could've sworn he saw something move, but when he watched, nothing happened, and he went on with his business harvesting the pods. They were round green cabbages the size of a fist, covered in pink leaves like a rose. They only grew in the dark and withered once they touched sunlight. If Stark had known its thorns were poisonous, he would've navigated through that room a bit more carefully.

He wondered whether this is where Jurnus farmed these flowers, so he could have the milk every day of the year. He wondered how nutritious it was.

As he filled his arms with the pods (he could probably fit five or six of them in his hands if he pressed them tightly against his chest) he heard someone whisper to him. He turned and saw Ydrib silhouetted in the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" Stark hissed at her, afraid to raise his voice in the dark. "You're not supposed to be here!"

"I came to help!"

Ydrib, a former consort of Zenetan pirates, bade him to be quiet and pressed a sweaty finger on to Stark's lips. Stark's hands were full, so he wriggled his face away by shaking it. Ydrib's face was framed by the same black markings the pirates had tattooed on to their faces. Two triangular black tattoos covered her eyes, like a mask.

"Listen…"

Ydrib explained that she came down with the intention of helping double the payload, until she heard a noise. Stark followed her into the tunnels, where she pressed her face against the rock wall.

"Can't you hear that?"

Stark heard nothing, and was getting impatient. It was strange. Usually he was the one to hear strange things, and usually he was the one to suffer the impatience and frustration of those that couldn't hear. Stark closed his eye and listened, but the air was empty. Just dead rock.

When Stark explained that Jurnus was waiting for him, Ydrib shooed him away. Stark shrugged and left.

****

"Is this enough?" Stark asked. "I mean, will it do?"

"Well we'll have to boil them first," Ms Sond said. "The milk. That's how it works, right?"

Stark stretched his neck looking around the atrium. "Where's Jurnus?"

Ms Sond tutted. "Gone. As usual. He didn't say where or when he was coming back. He said he was called somewhere. I don't know."

"You don't know…" Stark said it more to himself than to her. He wasn't surprised by her ignorance, and too busy to be ignored by it.

He didn't want to be stuck here in this room with these idiots. He wanted Jurnus. Needed Jurnus. He was supposed to help him.

Stark went from person to person asking if they knew where Jurnus had left. He stayed away from Torryn and his mother.

"Jurnus, Jurnus," Stark said to Ando'reen. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Ando'reen said. She couldn't look him in the eye. Probably because of what he'd seen the night before. Probably because she was ashamed. She was still touching the marks on her wrists where she had cut herself, as if she still couldn't believe they were real.

"You were there…" she said.

"I'm sorry," Stark said. "I didn't mean to…"

"You saw me…"

"I did. Jurnus saved you. You're all right now."

"I'm not. I'm not all right. But I didn't die…"

"That's good. Dying's bad. Dying's really really bad. I mean, it's not…. There's light… and there's love, if you want there to be, and I could guide you…but that's not what you want."

Stark took her hand.

"Death is not the answer to pain. Not for the living, anyway. In life, we grow and become more than we are. In death, it just ends. It's the final destination. It's where we're all supposed to go. But not just yet."

"I thought last night was going to be my last night in this world."

"It wasn't. It won't be. We'll help you. Jurnus will help you."

"Jurnus!"

Jurnus returned through the atrium doors, looking moody, and downtrodden, his eyes turned to the floor. As he faced his patients, his smile widened but his eyes were crying.

"If you've all had your drinks, it's time to pray."

Stark tried to ask him where he'd been, but Jurnus just said something about the communications array and a delivery that was delayed, and Stark left it at that.

Jurnus sat down facing his guests. As he slowly breathed in and out, defining the rhythm, they all followed his example. He encouraged them to sit in a peculiar manner with their legs folded beneath them for a steady position, and likewise the group followed suit. They did everything he asked of them, but still, somehow, it wasn't enough. Jurnus was easily agitated. Stark sat next to him and listened to him breathing deeper and deeper, as if he was digging for something he couldn't reach. Ydrib, too, was one of the few with his eyes open, wide open even, listening not to the silence and the breathing, but to something else entirely. But she was known for her paranoia. She was unstable, that's why she was here. Stark wasn't going to be like that anymore. He wasn't. He wasn't. He wasn't.

Stark wasn't ever paranoid. It wasn't a delusion that the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans were after him. It was real.

Next to him, he could hear Ms Sond talking. She was crying. To what god was she praying? It was rude to listen in. Even Torryn was praying, reciting the same song his mother uttered into the eternal ether. He had a beautiful voice.

Stark decided to ignore the voices, as he always tried to do, respect the voices, as he always failed to do, and focus on calming his own woes, even though it never worked. At least, that's what he told himself. He knew a collection of prayers, a pantheon of gods, and he never knew which one was listening, or which one would answer. There were so many roads to take, so many places to see; Stark knew all of them and Stark knew none of them. He knew only what the voices told him.

A lot of those places where old and abandoned, forgotten by time itself; their paths overgrown and overtaken by nature, and the afterlives they lead to were no longer receiving visitors, for there was no-one left that knew how to get there. How lonely those gods must be, Stark wondered.

He knew Zhaan would be hidden in the embrace of the eternal Goddess herself, one with Love and Eternity, with the Mother. Stark never knew his own mother. He liked the idea of a Mother, waiting for him. No doubt everyone did. So he prayed to her, and he prayed to the Hynerian gods in Rygel's stead, to plead on his behalf, for the old Dominar was many things, but he wasn't humble. That way at least they had his testimony to balance against Rygel's absent conscience.

He missed Moya, he realized. He even missed Talyn, but he didn't miss Crais. Crais could jump off the top of this tower, for all Stark cared. No, no hateful thoughts. Stark banished hateful thoughts for now. Crais was a blot of grey in an ink black sky in which the stars shone the brightest. And his Zhaan shone among them, always beckoning him. He missed her the most.

****

That night, a man died. He wasn't even the oldest in their group, Ms Sond was older, but without warning he seemingly lost his grip on life itself without any doctors around for several lightyears.

Jurnus tried to save him. Gasping for breath in between words, the old man begged to be heard, and when he touched the priest with his spotted hands, Jurnus winced. Light returned to the old man's pupils and strength returned to his hands, but his heart wouldn't budge. The pain was too much for Jurnus to bear.

"I can't…" he said and let go.

Ando'reen was there at his side, to bear witness, and to catch Jurnus when he fell.

"If I do this, there's no coming back. It's too much…. Just…. just too much…"

There was terror in the old man's eyes. There was terror in Jurnus' eyes. They could both see Death move closer and closer into that room. Stark could see it too.

Stark may not have known how to handle the living, but the dying? That was second nature to him.

With gentle steps he moved closer to the old man's bed, and he slowly loosened the straps of his mask along the way. None of them knew what he was about to do, but none of them dared to stop him. As soon as the light hit them, they felt its soothing presence.

"I will guide you," Stark said softly. Death was simple. Death was easy. He understood fear of death more than most. The fear of no more future. "Come towards the light. See what I see. Let go of your pain."

Stark watched the light flicker and leave the old man's eyes. A smile briefly lingered and then faded. Stark would remember it well. As their lives briefly connected, a part of the old man would stay with Stark forever, in his memories, in his soul. Stark remembered.

"It's done," he said. He awkwardly put on his mask again. He felt a bit ashamed to have been seen as exposed as he had been. Naked, almost. But he never said.

"What did you do?" Ando'reen asked.

"I helped him cross over to the other side," Stark said. "I calmed his spirit in his final moments and showed him the door to the other side."

"The other side? You mean…"

Stark nodded.

"What do you see on the other side?" Ando'reen asked.

Stark shrugged. "Nothing. I don't see anything. I only see them, and only they see what's on the other side. Perhaps we all see different things. Perhaps we all find our own way after death. I told you…"

"Death... is not the end," Jurnus said, as he closed the old man's eyes. Then he hugged Stark.

"Thank you," he said.

"I just know…" Stark said, his mouth pressed against Jurnus' shirt. "… that I know nothing."

Stark, not a fan of hugs, waited to be let go.

"Maybe that's all we need to know…"

"You are wiser than you think, my friend," Jurnus said. "You helped this man in ways I could never have. Thank you for allowing us to witness it."

"What do we do now?" Ando'reen asked. "His body?"

"I will take care of it," Jurnus said.

"What was his name?" Stark asked. "The old man, I mean…"

They all went silent for a bit, deep in thought.

"Quello," Ando'reen said. "I think."

"Let's all pray for Quello," Jurnus said. "May he rest now, undisturbed."

Jurnus placed the blanket over the old man's face, before he all motioned them to quietly leave the room.

"Sleep. Tomorrow is a new day," he told both Ando'reen and Stark. "A new beginning."

When Stark left for his room, he thought Jurnus would be going to sleep as well, instead he saw a candle move down the tower's steps into the dark below.


	2. Chapter 2

Stark dreamt he was an old man with spotted hands. He dreamt of burying a father and a mother as the sun set, and of burying a wife and child as the sun rose again. He dreamt of the dirt underneath his fingernails, of an empty farmhouse next to a red blooming tree.

"There's nothing you could've done…" someone said, someone he trusted, someone he ignored.

Dirt grew into fields of long grass and the house turned to dust. And then he started walking.

Ando'reen woke him and Stark didn't know where he was. Stuck between dream and reality, he wondered why there were no trees here and he forgot why his hands weren't old and why the wind wasn't cold. Covered in sweat, he trashed his covers and threw them on to the ground.

"Get away! Get away from me!"

"I'm sorry," she said. "You were talking in your sleep."

"I said get away from me! LEAVE!"

So she did. Stark didn't know why he was so full of anger or where it had come from. This was his room, not hers. He didn't need her listening, he didn't need her help, or maybe he did.

He stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night, unable to sleep. He didn't want to risk returning to the dirt, afraid of what might be waiting for him there.

****

"The past, present and future are all connected," Jurnus said as he guided them through meditation.

His positive energy was contagious, despite the loss of Quello the night before. They mourned him in prayer, as they called out his name, shouting it at the top of their lungs to honour his memory.

Stark didn't yell, he didn't need to yell, and Jurnus placed a hand on his shoulder in passing, a sign that he understood, walking around the group as he surveyed them.

"There are thirteen of us now, where there were once fourteen," Jurnus continued. "But if you close your eyes you can still feel him. He's still here. Connected to us all. When I say death is not the end, I mean it. We are not alone, because we're never alone. To heal, you must understand that. We are part of something bigger, and our lives are connected to all life force. We are not lost, because we can never be lost. We will be found… in the life beyond this one… We will see our loved ones again…"

There was a collective sigh all around them. Stark felt relieved, although he wondered whether this was all based on what had happened last night. There was something on Jurnus' mind, but he didn't know what.

"There is something I mean to show you today, which I think will help you all to heal. Fate has decided that this is where your paths have taken you, so I will lead you towards it. Come."

The group looked at each other in confusion and anticipation as Jurnus opened the atrium doors.

"I knew there was something else!" Ydrib told Ando'reen. "I knew there was more to it than this! We're going to learn so much more! I can't wait!"

When Stark saw Ando'reen's faint smile, he felt sorry for his sudden outburst that night. There had to be a way to make it up to her somehow.

The hot desert sun reached the highest point in the sky that day, shining its light straight down the hollow depths of the tower. The entire atrium lit up in bright colours as the light hit the defensive screen. A rainbow of colors touched the atrium floor. The patients considered it a sign.

"Come along," Jurnus said, growing impatient. "It's time."

Stark fidgeted nervously at the ends of his sleeves as he followed at the back of the group. Being last, he closed the atrium doors one at a time. The ancient doors creaked as usual, heaving and resisting as if they really didn't want to close this time, out of pure spite. Stark was out of breath when he was done, and turned around only to see the group reach the end of the tunnel.

He hurried to reach them, but he knew the way. This tunnel lead to the cellars where the Habernas pods grew, which only thrived in the darkest of places. Just as he was about to catch up, he remembered the flowers that grew along the vines. Wouldn't those be a perfect present for Ando'reen? If he would apologize, that would be the way to do it. And he would.

When the group took a different turn, Stark quickly dashed into the cellars. Hanging from the walls was a torch covered in dust and cobwebs that hadn't been lit in ages. Stark thought of lighting it, but with what? Instead, he moved into the dark and looked without light, evading the poisonous thorns as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

A few pods had sprouted overnight, budding gently from the ranks of the thick vines growing everywhere. And among them, the tiniest of things, grew flowers, fragile and soft. Like the pods, they shared the soft outer shell of flower petals, but without the milky content perched within. Maybe that was still yet to grow, or maybe they wouldn't grow at all. Either way, Stark reached down, his shirt getting stuck on a thorn as he did so, and he gently plucked the closest flower from the vine. He dared not smell it, preserving it in its entirety for Ando'reen's touch. What would an apology be worth if he stood to gain from it? No, this was for her, and her alone.

He stopped, hearing a distant sound, like voices, yelling in excitement.

Tearing himself free, Stark moved outside, carefully placing one foot in front of the other as he avoided the vines growing on and through the stone floor, and then he was out. He hurried up flights of stairs and found himself back where he started. Desperately he tracked the group's movements but lost his way when the tunnels turned as dark as the cellar. And all while he ran, he held the flower out in front of him in a clenched fist, the beautiful petals sticking out from his gloved hand.

"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here…" he muttered aimlessly as he found his footing in the dark, hoping they might hear him and wait for him. In his desperation, he didn't stop to think where he was going. Stark just followed the trail, went down the small steps carved into the rocks as the stone walls turned into caves and the ceiling crept lower and lower in the form of stalactites. When his foot plunged into a puddle of freezing water he shuddered, retracted his drenched foot in a state of sudden panic and he fell. He didn't know where he was. He couldn't see.

Slowly he undid the straps of his mask and the leather bindings loosened. Through the cracks the first rays of orange light escaped into the cavern, and the voices grew louder.

He remembered the dream, Quello's death, and put the two together. He remembered the corpse still lying upstairs in the Tower's highest room. He remembered the hot sun and the hot desert wind, and that somehow he'd managed to find himself far away from all of that. As he pressed on and focused his light, he could see a gigantic metal wall, as if a giant had cut straight through rock with a knife and left it there.

It hurt to use his light like this. It burned. Stark pressed his mask against his face and walked by the light he allowed to escape. One-handed, he clambered down the slippery cavern floor towards the wall.

He hesitated to touch it. It was cold. Chilled to the core. Stark could feel it was dense. It would take several laser-guided torches to burn through this hull. Hull. It was the outer edge of a ship.

Stark realized his group hadn't come in this direction after all.

There was a round hole in the wall. Next to it on the ground lay a rusted hatch.

He climbed into the airlock, finding the tunnel to be open, and all consoles dead. The air was dusty and lifeless, yet there were traces of footfalls on the ground where the dust had been disturbed.

Beyond was a massive chamber. Stark tightened his mask again, because there was plenty of light here. At least there was fresh air. The entire ceiling seemed to have caved in. Heavy sunlight pierced the ancient darkness, revealing a cage at the heart of the room, its bars rusted and bent awkwardly outward, as if there had been an explosion at the centre of it.

The desert had found its way inside as well. The room was covered in sand.

How long had this been here? How many more relics of ancient, dead civilizations-

Stark found a skeleton half buried in the sand. There was a Peacekeeper emblem on his ragged uniform, torn to shreds by time and…. something else… Maybe birds had come inside to peck at the remains, but the damage Stark saw was clearly bigger, sharper, and ruthless. He resisted the urge to pray for the deceased, because it was a Peackeeper. Out of decency and mostly fear, he uttered a few syllables of his go-to chant and waved his hand above the body to indicate in its general direction. He didn't mean most of it, or any of it really.

So he tried again, putting Ando'reen's flower in the pouch around his neck. He kneeled beside the body and hoped the gods would listen when he prayed for the dead man's soul, if he'd even had one. It was better than nothing. Better than this horrible death.

"Is this what you deserved?" Stark asked out loud, peering into those hollow eye sockets. As he looked, he wondered who was looking back.

Then he thought he heard a scream, but it didn't matter. He'd forgotten the scream by his next breath, when his heart missed a beat, when his blood chilled in its veins, hearing a roar that shuddered the entire cavern, the entire ship, so bloodcurdling and immense it rattled Stark's innards. So deep and terrifying, Stark froze in his place.

What had been hiding underneath them while they slept? What horrors were waiting for them in the dark? Stark looked back at the huge cage at the centre of the room, saw the immense docking bay doors gracing the outer ends of the room, and realized the roof of the ship hadn't caved in. It had been torn open. From the inside.

Stark ran towards the sound. The other side of the chamber had suffered more severely than the side Stark had entered by. Several caved in tunnels blocked his way, but there was a place he could walk through where the hull had been damaged in what Stark could only imagine was a devastating crash.

Still he could hear it moving in the dark. Dust rustled with its every mighty step. The floor shuddered. Ydrib had been right. He had heard something.

The side of the ship had been torn open like a knife through a can. Water had flooded parts of the ship, and as Stark found a way around it, he found a way out, into another vast cavern. Stark jumped from the side of the ship, three metras down on to a rocky slope, and the sandy surface sent him tumbling down, his feet hitting several stalagmites along the way, until he plunged into water.

Freezing water.

The edge was shallow, but beyond that the bottom dropped away into a dark and deep lake. Stark wasn't far from land, but his feet didn't touch solid ground. He thrashed away, sputtering and gasping for breath. He couldn't swim.

He pushed and bobbed up and down the water level with his face. The more he struggled, the worse he sank, the more he pushed himself away from land. His clothing weighed him down.

By chance, his foot touched a rock formation underwater, giving him the slightest boost by which to push his mouth above the water's surface. With his hands pressed outward left and right for balance, he made for the strangest balancing act or scarecrow under the water's surface. If his sandal slipped and he would fall, he'd lose himself to the panic and the water again, and risk drowning and death.

He was terrified of drowning, he realized. This momentary pause gave him the calm he needed to think. The edge was so close, he could almost reach it. If he could grab one of the stalagmites growing from the ground, he could pull himself out and clamber back on solid ground.

He stretched himself further and further, nearly losing balance and tipping over… He couldn't make it. He realized he had to risk it. He had to jump and use the rock underneath his foot to push himself in the right direction. It was the only way.

He bent his foot, slowly, and let his face submerge underneath the water (he held his breath), and pushed. His body sank down into the water headfirst while he reached out his hand towards the land. Kicking and thrashing with his feet he paddled and made waves. His fingers touched the slippery rock but couldn't grab hold. He pushed with his arms, he pushed with his legs, he screamed the lungs from his body and grabbed the stalagmite within his fist and held on.

He was out. Drenched. Dying. He was exhausted, lying on the dusty cavern floor regaining every breath. He wanted to fall asleep, but his pounding heart wouldn't let him. The ground absorbed so much liquid it turned to mud beneath his touch. His wet clothes weighed him down so much and stuck to his skin, he couldn't move. And the worst of all was, his sandals made an awful squishing sound whenever he moved. He laughed at that thought.

Stupid sandals. He got them off some man on some distant world in some distant market when his old boots were falling apart. They were gifts, in fact. Without them, he would probably never have been able to reach that rock in the water. He could have died.

"Thank you," Stark whispered, in between gasps and spitting out water. Fate had been kind to him this time. As he got up, mud stuck to his face and clothes. He didn't think as he rushed headfirst into danger.

Sunlight reflected on the ripples on the lake's surface. He was late. He was much too late. He was an idiot, stupid and wet, and he was late. He quickly touched the pouch that hung around his neck, it was still there, but it didn't matter anymore.

He ran through narrow passages where the water had once spent millennia cutting through the rock, leaving a trail of waterdroplets and muddy footprints behind with every step. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew he had to be close. He had no breath to call out names. The cavern roof stretched high above him, supported by strong ancient pillars of limestone, while sunlight streamed through the cracks where time had chipped away at it. By the direction of the sunlight, he found his bearings, and made his way up. He surmised he had to be walking parallel to the ship now. The ship was close to the castle, almost directly underneath. Maybe that's why only the tower survived. The rest of the castle had been destroyed when the ship crashed into the mountains. Eventually it was all buried by the sand.

Suddenly he saw something. A familiar shape, familiar hair, sticking out above a rock.

"Ydrib!" Stark spoke, his voice broke.

Ydrib was just sitting there, it seemed. Oh, he was so glad to see him.

"I'm back," Stark said. "Jurnus... where is everyone?"

Ydrib didn't move or speak. As Stark peered around the stone holding Ydrib up, he knew why.

His face had been frozen in a look of fear, but like his body, limp and pale and ravaged. All the bones of his body had been broken. It was like he had been thrown against this rock, shaken until there was nothing left that lived. Blood had pooled down the front of his shirt, where seven huge teeth had sank into his flesh and did as they pleased.

He wasn't the only one. As Stark followed the trail of blood down into the cavern, he found a place surrounded by rocky walls and no way out. Down below, beneath the contorted, torn, chewed and burned bodies of his unrecognisable group, everything was the colour of blood.

Stark's voice completely abandoned him, betrayed him when he needed it most, to wail in agony for the pain he felt that moment. He sank to his knees, fell and bruised himself pressing his palms against the bare bloodstained rock beneath his feet, because he couldn't stand to look anymore.

They had all left him. All gone.

Ydrib.

Ms Sond.

Even little Torryn. The little boy rested quietly in his mother's deathly embrace.

Beautiful Ando'reen… Stark spotted her light blonde hair stuck to a burnt corpse in the pool of blood. She used to comb that hair. She used to grow that hair.

Stark took the flower from his pouch, but found it had fallen apart whilst in there. It hadn't survived his fall and drowning, and had become just a collection of pink petals and dirt. They slipped from his fingers as he couldn't hold on to the remains. It was the last straw.

Stark fell to the ground, sobbing.

Time seemed to pass by, and Stark couldn't tell anymore whether seconds or eons had come and gone. Then the ground seemed to shake a bit and he heard strange noises close by, from above. A body, out of nowhere, splattered on to the bloody remains in the pit and blood drops scattered everywhere. Stark freaked. Slowly looking up from his position on the ground, he saw a huge figure lying on the edge of the cliff above the pit, casually tearing off body parts and throwing them down below.

As it finished, it climbed down the side of the cliffs to pick out its next meal from the collection of bodies in the pit. Its massive tail swung over Stark's head as it passed by.

It had a massive, muscular body, skinny to the point of malnourished, but stout legs and huge claws. It was covered in green, glowing wet scales and a ridge of large red spikes trailed along its lengthy back all the way to its tail and forming a sharp mohawk on its pronounced forehead. Its broad head was relatively larger than the rest of its body, triangular in shape and covered in small spikes at the edges of his jaw, like a beard. Its lower jaw was larger than its upper jaw. Bits of flesh and clothes stuck to the protruding teeth sticking outward from its gaping maw, which it couldn't properly shut. The front was painted red with blood from its recent feeding.

It chose its next meal and climbed back up the cliffs with ease. Atop the rocks, it bathed in the sunlight, and Stark caught a glimpse of its face. Stark recognised its features, though primitive and animalistic, he spent enough time among the Scarans to recognise its kind. The tiny humanoid noise with elongated gaping nostrils, the pronounced brow covering the beady black eyes. Ruby red lips and ridged holes where its ears should be. Somehow, it was Scarran, yet primal, vicious, and more animal than anything like its brethren. Where did it come from? Why was it here?

Slowly, Stark rose to his feet, keeping his eye locked on the bloodthirsty creature above. It seemed to have rolled on to its back while it played with its food, revealing its scaled belly. Stark figured the creature was almost three times his size, or four. It would devour him too, no doubt, given the chance.

As he backed away, his sandals squished beneath his foot. The material had absorbed too much water. Stark looked up, but the creature was still eating. So he took another step.

 _Squish._

 _Squish._

 _Squish._

Stark could see Ydrib's body around the corner, pulverized against the cave wall. Ydrib's eyes looked downward and saw nothing.

 _Squish._

"I. HEAR. YOU."

It wasn't a voice. It was a furnace. Every syllable was like an earthquake in waiting.

"I WILL FIND YOU. I WILL TEAR YOU. BURN YOU."

Every word ended with a breathy silence preceding a storm.

Stark jumped into the shadows and closed his eye in terror.

"I THOUGHT I HAD YOU ALL. YOU WERE DEAD. WHY CAN'T I SMELL YOU."

Stark was wet and covered in mud, but he knew there was sweat underneath it. There was fear. As he waited for death, he heard the creature move into the other direction, the direction from which he had come, back to the crashed ship. Stark spotted the tunnel leading back to the castle behind Ydrib. If he dashed for it, if he risked it, he could live. He could escape it in the narrow passageways where the dragon would not fit. Although maybe its breath could.

"YOU WANT TO PLAY GAMES. YOU PLAY GAMES WITH THE SKARWATH, YOU DIE."

Stark ran. Stark fell. Stark heard the earthquake on legs approaching behind him, like a distant thunder turning to instant lightning. He could feel the heat building. Hear the claws ripping through the rock as the creature climbed down. The maw opening.

Stark jumped right and heard the creature crash into the wall trying to slow down. The tunnel collapsed and the walls came crumbling down. Stark returned into the rocky maze and saw the sunlight reflected off the lake below. Short breaths. He couldn't afford to slip. He looked carefully where placing his feet for his next bound from rock to rock.

He lost the creature in the narrow passages, but the Skarwath knew them better. It had been its home for many cycles. The creature walked cliffs and rocky ridges above and followed closely.

Stark had to keep running, even though the creature was faster on its feet than him, even though the creature knew the caves better than him, even though the creature could smell him and track him from afar.

The caves were yellow in the sun, and orange in the stark shadows. The shadows were Stark's ally.

"I KNOW THAT SCENT NOW. BANIK SLAVE. I DEVOURED MILLIONS OF YOUR KIND. THEY NOURISHED ME. YOU WILL JOIN THEM IN DEATH."

Stark wiped away his sweat. He thought of one way he could entrap the creature, one way it couldn't outrun him, but there was every reason it would fail. The only way it could possibly work was for Stark to anger it, to make it furious, to make it come after him with everything it got. It had to want him more than anything. It had to run at him with all its might.

"I'm not frightened of you!" Stark yelled into the ether. "Because… because I'm not just any Banik! I'm Stykera! T-That means I can see your future! Your future, yes… and I can see how you will die!"

Stark swallowed, as he once again undid the straps of his mask, knowing the Skarwath was near.

"You will die in here, alone and scared…"

"IS. THAT. MY FUTURE? OR YOURS."

The voice came from above him. The creature had perched itself above the chasm right above Stark, its hot breath oozing down into the crevice. What scared Stark most was that it as it raised its upper lip and showed off its massive teeth, the Skarwath seemed to be smiling.

"You want to see?! Here's your future!" Stark bellowed and let his inner light burst forth from the space beyond his mask. Orange and gold light filled the air and illuminated the Skarwath's face. It flinched and roared in pain, a pain that affected its very soul, fuelled by memories, by farmhouses, by red trees, dead loves and fruitless journeys and a life lost into the void and pierced by a thousand swords. Stark took pleasure in sharing it and in releasing his hate, knowing that the Skarwath felt it.

No Scarran mental powers could protect the soul from this kind of agony.

Stark strapped in and ran. The lake was up ahead, but first he had to traverse an ocean of rock and spiky stalagmites. The Skarwath burst right through them as if they were nothing, and as it jumped it scraped the ceiling with its scaly back. Stalactites fell from the ceiling and crashed around them. Stark ran, jumped and held on.

Hate had blinded the Skarwath. In its stride, it had gone too fast and could not stop when Stark slowed down. It overreached and plunged straight into the icy cold lake. Steam rose from the depths of the water the microt it touched.

Stark came up for air, holding on to the stalagmite in his hand. He knew the water wouldn't stop or kill the Skarwath, but it would slow him down. He only had one chance for escape now. Stark pulled himself out of the water and ran up the trail toward the crashed ship. As he looked back, he saw the creature thrash and lash out at the water in its anger. It wouldn't be long before he was able to paddle back to the shore.

There it was. The side of the ship. The cold massive hull of the Peacekeeper vessel, ripped open by the rocks themselves. Fortunately, the rip was too narrow for the Skarwath to fit. Stark was safe for the time being.

The only way to really escape now was to head to the surface, but that wouldn't do. There had to be a way to send a message to passing ships in this system, flag anything at all for help, for anyone to come pick him up and save him. Maybe he could signal Moya somehow, hail Crichton, hail Crais, any familiar face would do.

Stark found a communications array on the ship's Command Deck, still active, with signs of it being maintained for quite some time. Someone had even made some adjustments to keep it operational. Stark was impressed by their handiwork.

He found the captain's body, dead on impact, lying on the dusty floor of the Command Deck, practically mummified, with his weapons and dagger still in their holster. As Stark looked up, and cleaned the dust off the hardened windows, he could see into the massive cavern below. The Skarwath below roared and destroyed the cavern around him, smashing ancient stalagmites in anger, before disappearing with a swish of his tail down the passageways.

"Stark?" a voice came from behind him. "Stark, you're alive?"

Stark couldn't believe it. It was Jurnus! He'd survived!

Jurnus hugged him tight. "I'm so glad it's you, my friend. So glad to see you alive."

"The others!" Stark said. "I saw their bodies! And the creature…!"

Tears welled from Jurnus' eyes. Stark cried too.

"I don't understand! How did this happen? Where did it come from?"

"I'm so sorry…" Jurnus said. "There was no other way."

Puzzled, Stark looked on and squeezed his friend's arms to make sure it was him.

"But it's okay," Jurnus said, a smile appearing through a veil of tears, which he wiped away. His face had turned red. "It's like you said, remember? Death is not the end."

"Death is not the end," Stark repeated, and nodded.

"We will see them again."

"We will see them again," Stark nodded.

"Will you forgive me?"

"I forgive you."

Jurnus' smile faltered upon hearing those words. His red face turned to tears again and he hugged his friend, whispering gratitude in his ears, and Stark held him tight. The two last survivors. Teacher and student.

"Forgiveness for what?" Stark asked.

Jurnus looked up in amazement, as if he had never seen this ship before. As he let go, he grabbed Stark's shoulder and held it tight.

"I arrived here on this ship, did you know that?" Jurnus said. "Tucked away in a cage. That there was the captain, O'struss. He was a cruel man. He used to come to my cell just to hurl insults and tell me all about the experiments they would perform on me when they'd reach our destination. We never did, did we? We crashed here. That's what we did. "

He wiped away a tear.

"When we crashed here I didn't know what to do. I would've been alone if it wasn't for him…"

Stark's inner eye turned suspicious now. "Why did you ask for my forgiveness?"

"He is the reason why I'm here. Why we're all here. If it wasn't for him, none of this would have happened. None of us would have changed the way we did. Death has changed us, Stark. Death has changed all of them. No more pain."

As realization sank in, Stark's hands turned to fists. He grabbed hold of Jurnus' coat and hissed to him in no uncertain terms. _"What did you do to them? What happened in those caves?!"_

"When He asked me to deliver my patients to him, I hesitated. He'd never asked me for anything like that before. I prepared meals, he had plenty of water to drink, and sometimes the odd pirate would swoop in and I'd happily point them in His direction… I never thought he would ever ask me…"

"He asked you for them?"

"He was hungry. He needed to eat or he would die. I couldn't say no. He's one of the last of his kind. Such beauty, such magnificence and glory…In my darkest hours, he was there for me. He helped me. I couldn't say no."

"You could have!" Stark cried out. "You could have!"

"When Quello died, you made me see the light. You said it. You showed me the way. You told me death is not the end…"

Jurnus placed his hand on Stark's mask, and Stark pushed him away.

"NO!"

All those deaths in the pit below. All those people… Their mutilated corpses flashed before his eyes.

Then Stark saw the handle from a dagger tucked beside the corpse's sidearm, glinting in the light, as sharp as the day its owner died.

Stark took it. Stark looked at it. And in mere breaths it was over. Half of it was buried inside Jurnus' chest before Stark realized he was screaming. And he didn't stop screaming. Or crying.

And the blood wouldn't stop flowing.

Then there was a roar. The same bloodcurdling roar Stark had heard before, only there was a pang of terror hidden beneath it. It was a Skarwath's scream of pain.

Stark let go of the dagger and walked over to the window, his hands covered in blood. Panting, he peered into the cavern below as the Skarwath clutched its chest and keeled over. As it tried to balance itself, it slipped and fell into the lake's icy grip. Steam rose as it sank, a final time, never to resurface again.

The light had now vanished from Jurnus' eyes as well. There was just silence now.

"Are you all right?" the delivery man asked.

Stark shot awake. He was lying in broad daylight at the centre of the atrium looking up at the sky through the circular scope of the Tower stretching away above him. The silhouetted face of a redskinned man with yellow eyes looked over him in worry, and Stark got up. His back ached.

He didn't know how long he'd lain there in a fetal position on the ground. Could have been weekens or even months. Stark checked his hands for blood, but they were clean.

"I need passage out of here, Stark said.

"What about my delivery? Where's Jurnus?"

"No-one's here," Stark said. "I'm all alone."

"What am I supposed to do with all these crates of food?"

"Take them. Leave them. Take them. Leave them. Take them. Leave them. I. DON'T. CARE! THEY'RE ALL DEAD! ALL DEAD!"

"You're one of the crazy ones, aren't you? One of his patients."

Stark took a deep breath.

"No," Stark realized. "I don't think I ever was."

****

Stark didn't look back as the ship finally took off. The ship's pilot didn't talk much, and neither did he, and he was fine with that. He said a prayer for the deceased, one by one, as the bright blue sky through the forward portal turned to darkness and stars.


End file.
